Winter is fading, Spring has nearly sprung in the Northwest, and it’s a great time to get your home in shape. Using a little elbow grease, or hiring a qualified specialist, can lead to a more enjoyable warm-weather season while also maintaining your home’s value. Read on for exterior and interior spring maintenance tips.
Exterior Spring Maintenance
The outside of your home naturally takes the brunt of winter weather. Here are some things to inspect and possibly repair:
- Inspect caulking and weather stripping on windows, doors, and protrusions such as dryer vents, as well as the incoming lines for cable, phone, and natural gas. Replace damaged caulk and apply new weather stripping. Clear silicone makes a good seal under door thresholds and stained wood frames.
- Look up: Do you have broken or missing shingles or tiles? Examine the flashing around chimneys, furnace vents, plumbing stacks, and roof edges.
- Are your gutters and downspouts intact and clear? Clean debris to ensure normal drainage.
- Now, look down: Clean your dryer vents. A clogged dryer vent can cause warm air to blow back to your dryer, raising the temperature. A simple cleaning can prevent this from happening and keep your home cooler.
- Clean out basement window wells.
- Make sure your downspouts discharge water at least 5 feet away from your house to prevent pooling against the foundation. Blocked or impeded downspouts are a leading cause of basement flooding due to pooling.
- Check air conditioner and heat pump units and remove debris.
Landscaping Maintenance
- Trim back any tree branches or shrubs touching your home – besides potential direct damage during wind storms, these provide an easy path for bugs to enter your home.
- Inspect the grading around your home to make sure that water drains away from your foundation.
- It may be a little early to plant most flowers, but you can replace your cracked or worn out garden hoses and rake away leaves, tree branches and debris from sidewalks and plant beds.
- Do you have dirty surfaces like sidewalks, pavers or siding? Nothing shows instant results like pressure washing! Rent a pressure washer (or hire a pro) to clean dirty concrete and pavers, and power wash vinyl siding, brick walls and surfaces that have become grimy, slimy or dull.
Interior Spring Maintenance
Inside, it’s important to check systems, especially your heating, ventilation, air conditioning systems (HVAC). Replace or clean air filters and buy extra air filters if you use disposable ones. During spring and summer, allergen counts rise; if allergies are an issue, replace your filter about every 60 days. It will be much easier (and likely cheaper) to schedule an HVAC technician to inspect your system now rather than when the first hot day hits.
Other key interior maintenance steps include:
- Consider installing an attic fan or vent to pull hot air off your ceiling. A power attic fan or ridge vents can keep your attic cooler in summer.
- Clean your clothes dryer vent clear of lint and functioning properly.
- If your refrigerator has an ice maker or water dispenser, inspect the filter and replace if needed.
- No doubt your windows – inside and out – could use a cleaning. Once the sun comes out regularly, you’ll be amazed at what you can actually see.
- Clean your ceiling fans and fireplaces.
- Test emergency sensors like your home alarm, smoke alarm, carbon monoxide alarms and fire extinguishers to be confident they are working properly. Unfortunately, many home owners forget to test these regularly.
Spring is a great time to apply the “ounce of prevention” you need to keep small issues from becoming expensive problems. This is critical if you plan to sell your home because home buyers want to know that all systems are working properly before purchasing a home. To be thorough, consider hiring a professional home inspector for a top-to-bottom inspection.
This post was contributed by Galand Haas, a Eugene, Oregon real estate agent with the Galand Haas team.
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